SACE Digital Technologies: how Stage 2 is assessed without a written exam
Year 12 Software Engineering
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Three assessment types, no exam
Most Stage 2 subjects finish with a written exam. Digital Technologies does not. The outline gives it three assessment types, and the external one is a piece of work you hand in.
| Assessment type | Weight | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Project Skills | 50% | Three or four tasks, together no more than 20 minutes in multimodal form |
| 2. Collaborative Project | 20% | A group solution for a client, with an individual Project Solution Walkthrough (up to 5 minutes) and Technical Walkthrough (up to 3 minutes) |
| 3. Individual Digital Solution (external) | 30% | A solution or prototype you create alone, with a designer's statement |
Students provide evidence in five to six assessments. The final result is reported from A+ to E−.
What the Individual Digital Solution needs
You choose a problem that interests you, deconstruct it and use iterative project techniques to build and evaluate a solution or prototype. The problem must be manageable but complex enough to reach the top grade, and it may start from something in your Project Skills or Collaborative Project, though you cannot repeat work already submitted.
- Code: original or adapted source code that shows selection, repetition and sequencing, with design comments.
- Algorithm design for the key parts of the solution.
- A graphical user interface and/or instructions for use.
- A designer's statement: the effectiveness of the solution and one or more innovative features. Up to 3 minutes if oral or 500 words if written.
- Size and length limits: the solution or prototype is no more than 1 GB, with a maximum time limit of 15 minutes, and everything is submitted in multimodal form.
The outline says the specific features assessed here are computational thinking (CT1, CT2 and CT4) and development and evaluation (DE1, DE2 and DE3). Read the performance standards for those, because they describe what separates an A band from a B.
The four focus areas
| Focus area | Examples of what you do |
|---|---|
| 1. Computational thinking | Abstraction, decomposition, algorithm design |
| 2. Design and programming | Programming a working solution, a user interface, testing |
| 3. Data analytics | Analysing data sets for patterns and trends, drawing conclusions, predicting |
| 4. Iterative project development | Planning, consulting a client, building in cycles, evaluating |
The outline's Project Skills tasks must include one that assesses programming, one on data analysis, and one on the ethics of data use. Our Programming Languages course and Databases course are useful background.
How to prepare when there is nothing to sit
- Pick the Individual Digital Solution problem early and write one sentence on who it is for.
- Keep dated screenshots and short notes as you iterate. They are the evidence for development and evaluation.
- Comment the code as you write it, not at the end.
- Record the 15-minute demonstration and check the file size is under 1 GB.
- Write the designer's statement last, and cut it to the limit.
SATAC and your ATAR
Digital Technologies is a 20-credit subject, and SATAC treats its results the same way as any other Stage 2 subject: a raw score out of 15 (up to 10.5 from the 70% school part and up to 4.5 from the 30% external part), which is then scaled. As with every subject, a grade corresponds to a range of scaled scores. Whether it counts depends on your SATAC combination rules, so check your Tertiary Entrance Statement.
Dates
Because the external assessment is a submission, not a paper, there is no exam date for Digital Technologies in the 2026 SACE examinations timetable. Your school will give you the Board's submission deadline for the Individual Digital Solution.
Use the daily paper for the knowledge side
The free daily paper on the Year 12 Software Engineering track is a short timed paper of 8 questions worth 25 to 35 marks, marked as you go. It cannot test the project work, but it can keep your concepts sharp.
- It helps with: algorithms, data structures, searching and sorting, databases, object-oriented programming and the consequences of computing.
- It does not help with: your own project, the client work or the designer's statement. Spend most of your time on those.
Exam answers
Because this subject has no exam, there is nothing to mark against an answer key. For the daily papers, the answers and worked mark scheme come with each paper once it has been marked, and they are Uni-Sine's own, not SACE Board material.
Common mistakes in Digital Technologies
- Building an impressive prototype with no evidence of iteration.
- Repeating work from Project Skills in the Individual Digital Solution, which the outline does not allow.
- Over-running the 15-minute limit with a long demonstration.
- Describing the solution without evaluating how well it solved the problem.
Common questions
Is there a SACE Digital Technologies exam?
What are the assessment types?
How long can the Individual Digital Solution be?
Does it count for an ATAR?
What grades are reported?
Revision cards
Try to answer before you flip.
Where to go next
- Solve it
Algorithm Visualiser
Watch sorting and pathfinding algorithms run step by step
Open the tool - Learn it
Programming Languages
Compiled vs interpreted, paradigms and the evolution of how we talk to machines
Start the course - Test it
Year 12 Software Engineering
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